O'Reilly Whitewashes Torture at Gitmo: 'There's Certainly No Proof That Ever Happened'

Posted by Ryan Powers, Think Progress at 5:02 AM on December 2, 2008.

Today on the Radio Factor, a listener called in to tell Bill O'Reilly that she had "zero confidence" in Obama's ability to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In the course of her call, the listener expressed mock concern for the detainees that were mistreated there. O'Reilly, apparently missing the caller's sarcastic tone, interrupted her to falsely claim that "no proof" exists to back-up accusations of mistreatment and that his two tours of the prison facility confirm that:

OREILLY: [T]here are accusations of mistreatment at Guantanamo, but there's certainly no proof that ever happened. I think they were rough in the beginning after 9/11, that some stuff happened that shouldn't have, but I went there twice and we have good contacts there. And, I think that they basically got that under control pretty quickly.

O'Reilly was so confident is his declaration that mistreatment never occurred at Gitmo that he selected the call as the "Radio Factor Call of the Day."

Listen here:

Despite O'Reilly's claims, "proof" of mistreatment and torture of detainees at Guantanamo Bay does exist. In 2004, the Red Cross documented "cruel, inhumane and degrading" treatment of detainees while inspecting the facility. Perhaps more disturbing, the Guardian reported last year:

Captives at Guantánamo Bay were chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor for 18 hours or more, urinating and defecating on themselves, an FBI report has revealed. ... One witness said he saw a barefoot detainee shaking with cold because the air conditioning had bought the temperature close to freezing.

O'Reilly is naive to believe that his short PR tours of Gitmo provided him with an objective view of the prison. CNN reported that when they visited Gitmo in 2005 that the restrictions placed on journalists touring the facility "made it nearly impossible...to get a full picture of the prison."

Tagged as: torture, bill o'reilly, gitmo, denial

Ryan Powers is a former intern of the Center for American Progress and a senior at the College of William and Mary.